Mandriva, Mandrake, Lycoris Archive

Lycoris, makers of the popular Desktop/LX Linux package, released their ProductivityPak Friday featuring a highly customized and integrated Openoffice.org and PDA Sync tool. With the ProductivityPak, Lycoris has introduced features not found in typical OpenOffice.org installations, such as a spell checker, and has advertised compatibility with, among other formats, Office XP documents.

One more dev release for Lycoris. Announcement, bug reporting and ISO download (530 MB). As for another popular Linux distro, the Gentoo 1.4 release is planned for some time in late December 2002.

"Just a cleanup over 63. The only code change was the pctel upgrade; didn't touch printing. Fixed automounter startup; fixed descriptive cups startup; fixed modprobe errors on boot; upgraded PCTel drivers to 0.9.6." Download the ISO here, report bugs here.

"I have tried for the last three weeks to generate a review of Mandrake 9.0 without much success. Not that I have ever been accused of being at a loss for words, but this particular release has left me speechless. I can't think of much to say about this release that hasn't already been said about several other Linux distributions." Read the review at LinuxLookup. In other news, both MandrakeSoft and SuSE have new CEOs since today.

Build 63 of Lycoris is released. Printing and automounting is mostly, but not completely, fixed in this beta. Joseph Cheek's changelog: "removed ghostscript-doc; added Fontmap to ghostscript-fonts; upgraded gimp-print to 4.2.3; updated espgs to 7.05.5; added automake-compat rpm ; fixed courier only font printing issues; made kicker clock 14 pt; removed lucent wavelan from prism2 probe list; fixed non-root vfat mounting issue; fixed printing." Download here, report bugs here.

MandrakeSoft and Pearson Education sent us over a copy of their latest "pro" edition of the popular Linux Mandrake 9.0. We already wrote a review about Linux Mandrake 9.0, so this is going to be a review of the ProSuite deal specifically and what you get for $199 USD RPP (easily found for around $175 USD in the market). Update: Apparently, StarOffice 6.0 is included in its full version with the distribution. Too bad Mandrake does such a poor job and include its RPMs along with some hundreds other demos in the two Commercial CDs, without saying a word about it (or where to find it) in the "Commercial Software Guide" booklet or another really prominent place.

"Last week a friendly delivery driver brought me a copy of Mandrake's PowerPack Edition 9.0. This is the complete boxed set, full of bells, whistles, and bangles. As others have said before me, 9.0 is the smoothest Mandrake yet. This article is more in the "tips and tricks" vein than a review, since I think Mandrake's latest has already been reviewed more than enough, more often favorably than not." Read the review at NewsForge.

Lycoris Build 62 Beta was released. Joseph Cheek, main developer at Lycoris, wrote a quick changelog: "Kernel printk fix; Mozilla form submit bug fix; Mozilla .rpm mime type fix; new gimp-print, cups 1.1.15; added chown/chmod for give/takeconsole; added newer Gatos ATi drivers; upgraded Autoconf to 2.54 and Automake to 1.5; added Gui devtools install". Report bugs here.

"Are you looking for a desktop Linux that you can use right out of the box? If so, give Mandrake Linux 9.0 a quick spin. Whether you are an experienced Linux user, a Microsoft Windows user, new to computers, or an IT-IS manager, Mandrake Linux 9.0 could be the operating system (OS) for you or your organization." Read the review at MozillaQuest.

"New in build 61: branded hwprobe; removed "unverified" from rlsysinfo; minor khelpcenter update; changed kicker clock applet type to plain, without date; minor mozilla update; upgraded NVidia drivers and rebuilt additional kernel modules; made printk default to level 6; fixed minor adduser bug; added more sdx1 and sdx4 entries; removed rmmod -a from crontab; added change the system password entry in control center; upgraded ghostscript to espgw 7.05.4, less to build 378, libdvdcss to 1.2.3, modutils to 2.4.21, PCMCIA to 3.2.1, util-linux to 2.11x and finished the unattended installer." Download the ISO of Lycoris and report some bugs.

"MandrakeSoft PPC developer Stew Benedict has been working hard behind the scenes to give Mac users a look at how Mandrake Linux 9.1 PPC is shaping up. This is a great opportunity to take an early peek at KDE 3.1 Beta2, XFree 4.2.1, Gimp 1.2.3, Koffice 1.2, and many others." Read more and check out screenshots at MandrakeForum.

Build 60 (aka Update3b) is now available for Lycoris. Changelog:

"Ralph Glanz told me about Redmond Linux around the time that he first became interested in it, just after he and I had written last year's comparison review about Mandrake, Red Hat, SuSE, and Libranet. Based on what Ralph told me, I became interested too, and got my own copy just shortly before Ralph's review was published. Right around that time, the name of the distribution was changed from Redmond Linux to what it is today, Lycoris Desktop/LX." Read the review at ExtremeTech.

Lycoris partners with TransGaming and brings ross-platform gaming into the hands of Desktop/LX users. With the new Lycoris GamePak, Desktop/LX users gain simple installation of improved and enhanced Open Source games, plus the ability to play top Windows games, all in one box. Access to TransGaming's WineX software, which allows DirectX games to run on other platforms, will be included with the Lycoris GamePak, on retail store shelves this Holiday season.